TalkTalk ditches passwords for voice recognition

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The company said all four million of its customers would be able to access their accounts over the phone with voice recognition acting as an identifier. Dubbed 'TalkSafe' the new feature analyses various characteristics of a person's voice, including the shape of the larynx, vocal tract, pronunciation, and emphasis and speed of speech. "TalkSafe will reduce the time customers spend on a call and if callers are transferred to a different customer service advisor, they won't have to repeat their details, as the voice authentication technology will have already verified their identity," a statement from TalkTalk explained. The technology works by creating a 'voiceprint' of a specific phrase that can be repeated each time someone accesses their account by phone.

TalkTalk said the initiative was part of its "long term strategy to ensure customer data is as secure as possible". In 2015 the ISP was hit twice by hackers. The company's financial results revealed that the second cyberattack gave hackers access to the account details of 150,000 customers. The hack cost the company £60 million, with 95,000 customers leaving as a result.

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ByAmelia Heathman

The move to biometrics is part of a growing trend of companies moving away from standard passwords. In February HSBC was the first UK bank to introduce voice recognition to verify customers. In consumer technology, Apple's inclusion of TouchID in the iPhone 5S was followed by a similar move by Samsung for the Galaxy S6.

Amazon has recently filed a patent that outlines using photos or videos with facial recognition technology to let customers make payments. The system, which is designed to stop people holding up pictures of a person's face, requires two different images of a face to verify a user.

The first image recognises the individual with the system then asking the user to perform a specific action or movement to ensure it isn't being duped by a photograph.

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Elsewhere MasterCard has unveiled its own 'selfie pay'. The company has been testing the feature with customers and says it's been successful enough for widespread use; it has also been testing heartbeat authentication.

Heartbeat authentication works by recognising blood flow patterns through veins. Researchers at Lund University, in Sweden, have tested using vein scanning for payments in shops on the local campus.